7.3 Credit Economy Initiative: Updates and the GTN

[Vanechka]

20 minutes ago, Dnlgorz said:

Are you serious? I am now taxed for sending Encryptions to my guild to build our flagship out. They don't give me anything. I can understand taxing if I sell them to my guild, but I Donate them! 

 

Dnlgorz. I honestly don't know what to say, I just tested it multiple times and did not get charged any tax, not the guild bank, not I either. It could be a bug... maybe based on rank? or a bug with the new player trying to put something in the Gbank and being charged a tax? Please check. 

[blakkwiddow]

41 minutes ago, Vanechka said:

You guys need to adapt or the economy will never get fixed. The easy solution is to tell "New" members that rewards will start after 30 days. Also, as a crafter, I have no problems paying the tax on anything.

I'm not paying 50m to give someone an aug. ** Not everyone is a trillionaire.

Edited June 16, 2023 by blakkwiddow

[Liokae]

4 hours ago, SithLikeTraps said:

Technically it can still be abused, I "gift" you an item, 1 minute later you "gift" me the credits. It requires a lot of trust from both sides, naturally, so it still could be a solution.

They could just make it so that any trade with credits, even ones without items, are taxed.  Having a big chunk of credit gifts stolen ("taxed") would still suck, but at least it would make it POSSIBLE to gift items. Right now I've got a set of cosmetic armor in my inventory that I already have in my own collections that'd cost me 81 *million* to give to my friend as intended.

 

The most money I've had at once across *every character on my account* totaled about 20 million.

 

As it stands right now, it's not even being taxed- I just straight up CAN'T give friends gifts, and I never will be able to again unless they do something like make 0-credit trades "tax"-free.

[Nee-Elder]

2 hours ago, casirabit said:

 So come on let's be more understanding of time zones.

i already was , in this subsequent reply--> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/929143-73-credit-economy-initiative-updates-and-the-gtn/?do=findComment&comment=9764497  ...which for some odd reason you chose to ignore.

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, SithLikeTraps said:

I agree that the sales should be taxed, and ideally all trades should go through the GTN. The problem is that the devs took the approach of "guilty until proven innocent" and treat any exchange as a sale. Right now I don't see how it would be possible to distinguish between sale and gifting if it's done between two players, so either they treat everyone as a guilty party and kill the social aspect or they revert this taxing even if it means that some traders will use it to avoid paying the taxes. The prices already went down considerably before this tax thing so I don't see why it needed to be implemented this boldly.

Well “selling” usually means an exchange of credits or other items at the same time.

And yes, I know they could just do it in two seperate trades. But sending credits would still be taxed.

Which means BioWare were more worried that people would use non credit items as defacto currency to avoid the fees if they were still allowed to gift with no restrictions.

To which I say, the solution to stopping certain items from becoming a default currency is to make “gifted” items Bind 2 Legacy. That would stop them from being resold or traded again as a currency.

That way people can still give gifts to help people out & not need to be taxed. It also keeps closed a potential loop hole from being used to avoid fees/taxes. 

It’s a win-win for everyone except people who’d want to circumvent the fee/tax system for their own personal gain. 

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, SithLikeTraps said:

Technically it can still be abused, I "gift" you an item, 1 minute later you "gift" me the credits. It requires a lot of trust from both sides, naturally, so it still could be a solution.

Any exchange of credits is now automatically taxed at 8%.

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, casirabit said:

Let me guess now they don't want guild members giving their encryptions so they can open the rooms they are working on.  If this is the case, I will inform my guild members not to do it as I do not want them to be taxed on a gift, they are giving the guild.  Another nail....

I’d say that’s probably a bug. But if it isn’t, it should certainly be adjusted.
In the meantime, your guildies should still be able to deposit items into the GB fee free. Then you could remove the encryptions & apply them as needed? 

[Balameb]

1 hour ago, Liokae said:

They could just make it so that any trade with credits, even ones without items, are taxed.  Having a big chunk of credit gifts stolen ("taxed") would still suck, but at least it would make it POSSIBLE to gift items. Right now I've got a set of cosmetic armor in my inventory that I already have in my own collections that'd cost me 81 *million* to give to my friend as intended.

 

The most money I've had at once across *every character on my account* totaled about 20 million.

 

As it stands right now, it's not even being taxed- I just straight up CAN'T give friends gifts, and I never will be able to again unless they do something like make 0-credit trades "tax"-free.

Thare are several armor sets that have a market value beyond 1 billion, so 80 mill fee seems ok on those cases. If the set has no were near that value, then be specific and report un the bug area.

 

Now, you never got more than 20 mill....and you have been around since 2011......

 

Word of advice. Instead of posting complaining, why don't you ask for advice on how to stop 12 years of playing without paying attention on how things work?

 

How to make my first 100 millions if i'm too lazy (pick one or combine):

• Sell 5000 crafting mats averaging 20k+ price each. Good candidates: Grade 11 Blues from slicing, underworld trading, and investigation. Grade 11 purples from biochem, worth a lot more.
• Sell legendary embers (you get those for 'free' from seasons, you also get those from gold you surely had plenty with 4 seasons)
• Exchange purple jawa junk for SRMs --> sell SRMs. Since you don't craft, you should already have enough of those to get hundreads of millions.
• All those repeated decos we get from seasons packs....well they are worth quite a lot for some people.
• What about all the things from Cartel Packs from seasons? You use it all? Then play a little and pay the fee. Or don't use all and sell somethig on GTN. I made hundreads of millions on new legacies where i don't have end game crafters selling decos and the ocasional CM dye from those packs.

 

In retrospect, i think i should have call that how to make my first billion for...

 

 

[DeannaVoyager]

9 hours ago, Vanechka said:

You guys need to understand that, we had a good system running but Farmers and Scalpers have ruined the system. 

These new taxations and other changes are targeting mostly these bad people who ruined our economy. 

 

 

The changes are not targeting "mostly" farmers and scalpers, they are targeting everyone else. I totally agree that something needed to be done, but this is not the way. 

 

We already had a bunch of gold sellers banned from the game and their credits removed, and surprise: prices immediately started to drop. I saw items in GTN I hadn't seen for months, and bought some stuff I had been wanting to buy for a while, but they were never listed. 

 

What we need is more active hunting  down and banning of credit sellers, and that includes eliminating sale runs, so that gold sellers will run out of credits to sell to other players. 

[Vanechka]

2 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

 

The changes are not targeting "mostly" farmers and scalpers, they are targeting everyone else. I totally agree that something needed to be done, but this is not the way. 

 

We already had a bunch of gold sellers banned from the game and their credits removed, and surprise: prices immediately started to drop. I saw items in GTN I hadn't seen for months, and bought some stuff I had been wanting to buy for a while, but they were never listed. 

 

What we need is more active hunting  down and banning of credit sellers, and that includes eliminating sale runs, so that gold sellers will run out of credits to sell to other players. 

Scalpers go hand to hand with farmers, they feed each other. I hit the credit cap the honest way years ago and have no need to sell anything in the GTN for a long time. If you want Bioware to ease up the regulations, I would be ok with it as long as they clean up ALL credits and have everyone start at ZERO. 

Yes, I am willing to give up all my credits in order to fix the system "others" have abused. well... maybe Bioware can leave a mil so that I can afford repairs and quick travel at the beginning. 

Am an armor set collector. I have ALL armor sets in the game unlocked, 95% purchased at the GTN at fair prices. Due to inflation, the remaining 3% was at ridiculous prices, and for the last 2%, I had to use the Cartel market because it was impossible to find at the GTN. So, that has affected me a lot. 

[Liokae]

10 hours ago, Balameb said:

Thare are several armor sets that have a market value beyond 1 billion, so 80 mill fee seems ok on those cases. If the set has no were near that value, then be specific and report un the bug area.

 

Now, you never got more than 20 mill....and you have been around since 2011......

 

Word of advice. Instead of posting complaining, why don't you ask for advice on how to stop 12 years of playing without paying attention on how things work?

 

How to make my first 100 millions if i'm too lazy (pick one or combine):

• Sell 5000 crafting mats averaging 20k+ price each. Good candidates: Grade 11 Blues from slicing, underworld trading, and investigation. Grade 11 purples from biochem, worth a lot more.
• Sell legendary embers (you get those for 'free' from seasons, you also get those from gold you surely had plenty with 4 seasons)
• Exchange purple jawa junk for SRMs --> sell SRMs. Since you don't craft, you should already have enough of those to get hundreads of millions.
• All those repeated decos we get from seasons packs....well they are worth quite a lot for some people.
• What about all the things from Cartel Packs from seasons? You use it all? Then play a little and pay the fee. Or don't use all and sell somethig on GTN. I made hundreads of millions on new legacies where i don't have end game crafters selling decos and the ocasional CM dye from those packs.

 

In retrospect, i think i should have call that how to make my first billion for...

 

 

Or, and here's a wild and crazy idea: Don't make me do a bunch of extra work to *GIVE AWAY* things I paid money for. You wanna tax *sales* of stuff? Sure! Fine! Whatever! But when you've got a solution of literally just.... not taxing non-monetary gifts, this is ludicrous. How about we just go with the easy, simple solution of "I buy something, I give something away".

And this is just for a single, bronze set of armor. I recently gave away a portion of my backlog storage of item sets, some platinum, to friends, most of which would cost way more in their fees than a single set of bronze. You cannot POSSIBLY think it would be reasonable to have to farm up something like fifty BILLION to just.... *give* stuff away. Not buy stuff, not sell it, just *give it away*. It's beyond ridiculous to expect me to spend more time earning credits to hand stuff out than I do actually, I dunno... playing the actual game?

The entire *point* is that I *don't have* the time to farm up tens to hundreds of millions of credits EVERY SINGLE TIME I want to give a friend a gift, and I shouldn't have to when the gift isn't having any impact on the economy. You're demanding I subsidize other people screwing up the market, and I'm not going to suddenly shift the bulk of my online time into working markets just for that.

But hey, if paying sales tax on non sales sounds like a perfectly legit idea to you, feel free to shoot a few dozen billion over my way. Not like you're buying anything, so losing it's totally fine.

[Liokae]

On 6/15/2023 at 8:33 AM, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

I'm sure some changes will be made so that people can give things to other players without their paying an exorbitant tax.

Don't know why you're sure of that when it was a blatant and glaringly obvious issue from even floating the concept, and is being defended by a bunch of people as being Good Actually.

[Balameb]

16 minutes ago, Liokae said:

Or, and here's a wild and crazy idea: Don't make me do a bunch of extra work to *GIVE AWAY* things I paid money for. You wanna tax *sales* of stuff? Sure! Fine! Whatever! But when you've got a solution of literally just.... not taxing non-monetary gifts, this is ludicrous. How about we just go with the easy, simple solution of "I buy something, I give something away".

And this is just for a single, bronze set of armor. I recently gave away a portion of my backlog storage of item sets, some platinum, to friends, most of which would cost way more in their fees than a single set of bronze. You cannot POSSIBLY think it would be reasonable to have to farm up something like fifty BILLION to just.... *give* stuff away. Not buy stuff, not sell it, just *give it away*. It's beyond ridiculous to expect me to spend more time earning credits to hand stuff out than I do actually, I dunno... playing the actual game?

The entire *point* is that I *don't have* the time to farm up tens to hundreds of millions of credits EVERY SINGLE TIME I want to give a friend a gift, and I shouldn't have to when the gift isn't having any impact on the economy. You're demanding I subsidize other people screwing up the market, and I'm not going to suddenly shift the bulk of my online time into working markets just for that.

But hey, if paying sales tax on non sales sounds like a perfectly legit idea to you, feel free to shoot a few dozen billion over my way. Not like you're buying anything, so losing it's totally fine.

By your own word you never got more than 20 million. If that is true, you are avoiding the credits like if they were a plague, then compain you don't have enough credits. Stop avoiding the credits, and you will see you can have a lot more without wasting time farming.

All the examples i gave you, do not require farming as in requiring you to waste your preciosus playtime:

Missions for mats are run in background, embers come as rewards for different things(including loggin in), jawa junk you just need to dissasenble the gear you don't need (i know you don't vendor or you would have a lot more credits), and the rest of the stuff from GS, well it completes by itself doing whatever you like, even just by loggin in.

On top of that: you seem to have the Real Money to purchase everything you like without credits, you could just as easily purchase a cartel pack, sell it and get the credits. It won't take hours of your time, it will be less than a minute to post on GTN, literally.

 

About bronze stuff requiring high fees, you are right that is wrong. Get a list of the values you see on each item end report it.

 

Side note: About purchasing things for others. That is something other games have embedded in their in game market (example, ESO). Is a feature that could be implemented here but i would add only if they add some restrictions to avoid helping RMT, like requiring the reciever to have been a friend for X days at least.

 

27 minutes ago, Liokae said:

Don't know why you're sure of that when it was a blatant and glaringly obvious issue from even floating the concept, and is being defended by a bunch of people as being Good Actually.

(IMO) What is 'good' is that more credits are being sinked, now in decent amounts. The method was not the best, the order was horrific, and some of the things that they did in the las months were not needed at all. On top of that several of the bugs from 7.3 (mail to alts, high fees for low value items, fees for consumables) could had been avoided with an extra PTS iteration, they closed it too soon.

But at least they moved in the right direction, that for BW standards, is massive improvement.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

3 hours ago, Liokae said:

Don't know why you're sure of that when it was a blatant and glaringly obvious issue from even floating the concept, and is being defended by a bunch of people as being Good Actually.

A - Because it's been acknowledged by the devs to be unintended.

B- Because there is a great amount of backlash over it.

C - Because it's stupid and makes no sense.

D - Because gifts aren't sales.

You're never going to get people to agree on everything. They may see it as good in their opinion and it's their right to hold that opinion. Their are no wrong opinions, there's just opinions.

[ARFett]

They knew EXACTLY what shipwreck they deployed!

This whole (too soon release) was a panic reaction due to the severe backlash of the Broadswork leak.

Why do I say it?

Because a few days before the news they will release it the posted they will need some weeks for polishing.

Leak came out and - surprise, surprise - TWO days later we got a info:

Release NEXT week.

It was totally unpolished seeing the rising numbers of issues and errors included.

And for so small a patch...again.

There is no excuse for that.

There was tons of feedback from the PTS - which was AGAIN and AGAIN ignored.

Also there are UNANNOUNCED changes kicking the players popping up all over.

Now you cannot buy Season levels via creds anymore which was a thing to blow off million of creds so the large cred amounts are reduced.

They had also the same options for PvP Season - gone now.

It was a small vent to reduce creds for people holding so much they did not know where to use.

Instead you need to - of course - use ONLY CC coins for unlocks.

This is not a battle against inflation.

It is a push to destroy Cartel Item sales vie Credits as well as ANY measure where you can use game creds to do something even REMOTELY useful anymore.

Creds as a whole are ridiculuosly devalued and the things you can do with them either priced totally out of proportion or means what you can DO with creds cut away.

If anyone still believes in the fairy tale these changes are against inflation:

WAKE...UP!

Every of these changes do NOTHING to battle inflation or reduce creds for people with bulging cred accounts.

They are only destroying social dealings especially for guilds who worked with rewards for certain activities or their tournament or simply helping INDIVIDUAL people gearing or just GIVING them things.

If people say "but there is a guild locker" I can only shake my head.

In large guilds ANYONE can take the things put in there and to MAKE a individual autho for taking THAT thing out which was intended to give needs a GM or officer adjusting the guild locker on a ridiculuos level.

Plus unguilded do NOT have this cred free way of giving away things.

And...oh, i forgot:

New guildies got a HARD-CODED 30 days ban.

There is so much anti-player bias in all these changes that I am frankly astonished how people can DEFEND this total mess.

The ham-fisted changes are making me speechless.

And again NO feedback from PTS or more importantly WARNINGS were heeded.

Edited June 17, 2023 by ARFett

[TziganeNZ]

6 minutes ago, ARFett said:

Now you cannot buy Season levels via creds anymore which was a thing to blow off million of creds so the large cred amounts are reduced.
 

Suggest you look again - you absolutely can buy season level catch up with credits. The character I'm currently logged in on is at level 38, and to catch up to (for example) level 40, I have the option of paying either 1,062,252 credits or 200 CC.

Unless you're saying you can't use credits to get to level 100, which is correct - I can use credits to level up to the 'current' level of 51 (104,233,760 credits) but not higher (because GS hasn't organically got to that yet).

 

[ARFett]

There was no "artificial threshold" before how high you can go with the unlocks.

As everybody did seasons on their own speed and means.

Or with their own time schedule.

So I COULD decide to use CC OR creds to unlock higher season levels.

Now that is curtailed again and choked down.

And you can go over this "treshhold" you mentioned on the unlocks - but only via CC.

Surprise, surprise...

Edited June 17, 2023 by ARFett

[Balameb]

4 hours ago, ARFett said:

Because a few days before the news they will release it the posted they will need some weeks for polishing.

Leak came out and - surprise, surprise - TWO days later we got a info:

Release NEXT week.

It was totally unpolished seeing the rising numbers of issues and errors included.

And for so small a patch...again.

There is no excuse for that.

There was tons of feedback from the PTS - which was AGAIN and AGAIN ignored.

Also there are UNANNOUNCED changes kicking the players popping up all over.

They might have launch 7.3 one week early at most. And would have made little difference, this is BW and they always launch with bugs that could have been fixed if they used PTS properly.

They only use PTS to get some impressions and make some adjustments, but they always have more changes that they don't get to implment and test on a PTS. They biggest issues like fees on mail to alts, fees on consumables and high fees on low value items could have been spotted on PTS.

4 hours ago, ARFett said:

There was no "artificial threshold" before how high you can go with the unlocks.

As everybody did seasons on their own speed and means.

Or with their own time schedule.

So I COULD decide to use CC OR creds to unlock higher season levels.

Now that is curtailed again and choked down.

And you can go over this "treshhold" you mentioned on the unlocks - but only via CC.

Surprise, surprise...

Sorry, That is just incorrect. I have been playing Seasons since 2 on multiple servers and it is working the same. The credit unlock option always came with a delay, first weeks not even a single level, then they add some and start incrementing by 1 lvl per day, and stop a few days before season ends.

[ARFett]

21 minutes ago, Balameb said:

They might have launch 7.3 one week early at most. And would have made little difference, this is BW and they always launch with bugs that could have been fixed if they used PTS properly.

They only use PTS to get some impressions and make some adjustments, but they always have more changes that they don't get to implment and test on a PTS. They biggest issues like fees on mail to alts, fees on consumables and high fees on low value items could have been spotted on PTS.

Sorry, That is just incorrect. I have been playing Seasons since 2 on multiple servers and it is working the same. The credit unlock option always came with a delay, first weeks not even a single level, then they add some and start incrementing by 1 lvl per day, and stop a few days before season ends.

About the "not rushed" answer you gave I can only let their own post speak for themselves:

"Hi everyone,

The team is wrapping up final polish on 7.3, so you should expect the update to be released within the next couple weeks. We’ll announce the exact date when we can but I just wanted to give you all heads up on a rough timeline.

Jackie"

Posten 5th of June saying next couple weeks.

Weeks not days.

Then 8th of June:

"Hello everyone, 

Following up on this timeline. Game Update 7.3: Old Wounds is targeted to go live on June 13th and patch notes will become available the day before. Expected downtime details will follow soon."

To say they did not know that the patch was NOT ready bug-wise as well as doing ANYTHING really with the feedback nor check about things like tax when sending creds to you own alts (which they said is a bug cough cough) is totally clear.

And no:

"Not only a few days"

So rushed panic release without any view of the abysmal state of the patch as well as the changes which are crushing as well as plenty "non-intended" if I still want to believe they did have a view WHAT these still - sorry - idiotic changes do to the player community.

Edited June 17, 2023 by ARFett

[Gnatsum]

You need a course in basic economics. As already mentioned, QT fees only punish new players. They're a nuisance to everyone else at most. If you want to fix the economy, then fix it. I mean fix it as one would a boxing match i.e. rig it. The reason prices went through the roof was because you increased the number of mats required for crafting effectively multiplying the demand without increasing supply. Demand>supply = higher prices. Ditto Cartel Market items. You have complete control of rarity, with that you can manipulate prices pretty easily.

To revisit QT fees, if you REALLY want to take money from people, then just do that. Pick a level you think is reasonable (100mil, whatever) and divide what everyone has by an amount so that only the wealthiest get there. If 4b is the current max, then divide by 40 for everyone (if you want 100mil to be the max). Don't just jerk us with nuisance fees, either fix it or leave us alone to play.

And PLEASE stop putting new areas on planets that you can't get to if you're ALREADY ON THE PLANET. I shouldn't have to go to the Galaxy map from Voss to get to....Voss and I certainly shouldn't have to use Google to figure out that's required.

[Darcmoon]

5 hours ago, Gnatsum said:

And PLEASE stop putting new areas on planets that you can't get to if you're ALREADY ON THE PLANET. I shouldn't have to go to the Galaxy map from Voss to get to....Voss and I certainly shouldn't have to use Google to figure out that's required.

The shuttle that you take to and from the orbital station also has an option to take you to the Interpreter's retreat.

[TheJediFolko]

You can't just fixed inflation with taxation.

You fix with with money sinks. You make a system that incentivizes players to spend credits.

[fabsus]

yeah i think that's a good idea.

please report every item, directy by an manual report to the customer support
and to give that more importance, tell all your friends, to do the same, for every
item you find. 
so every crafting material, every consumables, all bronce, all silver and the majority
of gold items. even many platinum weapons are taxed way over the actual selling price.
i think the flood of reports really really helps everybody.

i mean they already knew everything on the pts... buy hey. we can't expect from them,
to login the game, use logs they have, or just think what could happen. but you asked
for it, you got it. have fun, don't cry.

 

[DawnAskham]

9 hours ago, fabsus said:

yeah i think that's a good idea.

please report every item, directy by an manual report to the customer support
and to give that more importance, tell all your friends, to do the same, for every
item you find. 
so every crafting material, every consumables, all bronce, all silver and the majority
of gold items. even many platinum weapons are taxed way over the actual selling price.
i think the flood of reports really really helps everybody.

i mean they already knew everything on the pts... buy hey. we can't expect from them,
to login the game, use logs they have, or just think what could happen. but you asked
for it, you got it. have fun, don't cry.

 

Beyond the sheer stupidity of assessing fees for player-to-player trades NOT involving credits, they set it up in such a way that the fee table is created once a blue moon based on god knows what data from all servers, and then is only updated when the game is patched.

So yeah, of course, assessed fees are going to be all out of whack with actual GTN selling prices given GTN price varies from server to server, hour to hour, day to day, week to week, etc. 

And that is before the fact some player-to-player trades are made specifically to find a mutually agreeable price, which may be well below whatever the last idiot posted the item for on the GTN.

For example, some people will post a garbage bronze weapon for 1 billion, which may be a credit seller using the GTN to move credits to a credit buyer by having the buyer post garbage items at the max GTN limit.

So a garbage bronze weapon the vast majority of us would just give to another player as they never sell even when listed for next to nothing may find the item comes with some ridiculous multi-million credit trade fee applied. 

Edited June 19, 2023 by DawnAskham

[TrixxieTriss]

On 6/16/2023 at 10:55 AM, Liokae said:

I've got a set of cosmetic armor in my inventory that I already have in my own collections that'd cost me 81 *million* to give to my friend as intended.

 

Is your friend in your guild or do they have an Alt that you could both park in a guild together for the next 30 days? 

If they are already in a guild with you & have been for more than 30 days, you can still transfer stuff for free by placing the items in the guild bank & having your friend remove them. Just make sure you check with the GM first to make sure you both have full access & they don’t mind.